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Monday, May 9, 2011

Blood Ceremony - Living With the Ancients: B

I read while doing some research on Living With the Ancients that some believe Blood Ceremony’s sophomore album signals a revival in 70’s-aping hard rock/metal sounding bands with female vocalists that also play the flute, a sentiment that made me laugh outright and fear a little bit for the current state of music. I hardly think that we are at the point that baseball is now where we are so desperate to prove our relevancy we are infinitely compartmentalizing our achievements into exponentially smaller and more meaningless subgenres (True story: At a Yankees game I attended, people celebrated that it was the first time that two consecutive foul balls were hit directly down the right foul line into the crowd. It was kinda sad.). And when I hear something like that about Blood Ceremony, I can’t imagine this supposed “revival” consisting of more than one or two other bands that just so happened to put out an album within a year of Living With the Ancients.

Not to mention that Blood Ceremony’s is hardly anything revolutionary. I was surprised to find, a minute and a half into first track “The Great God Pan”, that Blood Ceremony was helmed by female vocalist Alia O’Brien, but that novelty soon wore off as Living With the Ancients congealed into a relatively bland aesthetically pleasing blues rock album that took more than a few cues from Clutch, Jethro Tull and Aleister Crowley. If you’re looking for an album to satisfy your cravings for the Sabbath sound that Sabbath was too diverse to constantly write (After, all The Sword can only release so many albums), you will enjoy Living With the Ancients. As for me, I’d rather move onto other less outdated modes of rocking out. Who knows, perhaps this album will spawn a revival in mediocre ‘70’s-hard rock/metal sounding bands with female vocalists that also play the flute, but you won’t see me giving two shits when that train rolls around.